DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: Long time reader here. I am struggling with a number of dating issues which I can’t find the solution to. I am 31 years old and barely had any success, due to the fact that partly it’s my fault because I either was afraid to put any effort in for fear of rejection or else a dilemma that I have been facing these past few years…. where do I go to find awesome women?

I am going to be honest I live in a Mediterranean sunny country and the social life here mostly consists of bars, rowdy parties, nightclubs and festivals. Loud people, overpriced drinks, cigarette smoke (we still smoke in clubs as if this was the 1980s), loud excessive noise etc. I am starting to get fed up of them because you can’t have a conversation in them, and it’s not fun as it was back when I was still in school. It’s not the first time my single friend (he has approached 45 and still wants to go out clubbing) calls me up for a night out and I come up with an excuse not to go and stay home to catch up with TV series. Obviously he is not going to frequent places where there are people my age and sometimes we end up going to a nightclub where the age group is 40 to 60-70 and these consist of married couples or divorced parents.

If I go out I much prefer a relaxed wine bar or else just going out for a meal or a movie. Which leaves the question … where do I go where it’s acceptable to approach women? IN nightclubs yes there will be groups of single women but approaching them in that environment is too overwhelming for me and it did not work when I was still in school either.

Sometimes I think maybe I need to say f--k it and go out and approach women in these places and who knows maybe it will lead somewhere. However I just don’t feel the thrill to do it and it’s getting frustrating knowing that I am stuck in this rut because I live in a small country and you always have to frequent the same places over and over again (which mostly involve loud music and drinks).

I have 2 groups of friends but some of them have coupled up, some kids have arrived and everyone is starting to go his own way so sometimes weekends have become a bit lonely. I seem to get on with pretty much everyone (I hope) and it’s not the first time women at work for example (2 of them are big friends of mine) call me a cuddly teddy bear.

Any help would be appreciated.

Not Going Places

DEAR NOT GOING PLACES: You’re asking a question that’s hard to answer with the information you’ve given, NGP. Not knowing where you live and thus not knowing what is around makes it difficult to say “ok, so go here”. But just as importantly, I don’t know who, precisely, you’d be looking for beyond a general outline marked “woman”.

I say this, in part, because a big part of figuring out where to go to meet women is going to be going to where the women you want to meet hang out. You aren’t a club guy or fond of loud, boisterous bars. That’s all well and good… but that also means that the women you’re most likely to be compatible with aren’t likely to be at those venues either. While people are complex and can have layers and many different interests, the likelihood of meeting someone at a nightclub who also vibes with your less-frenetic lifestyle preference is lower than it would be elsewhere.

Plus there’s the issue of how much you dislike spending time in those venues, which seeps into your interactions with these theoretical prospects and damages chances further.

So the first step would be, simply, to figure out who you’d be interested in, personality and interest-wise, and backwards engineer where she’s likely to spend her time. Ideally, someone who you’d be compatible with would also be more likely to hang out in places where you would be comfortable. Or at the very least, the places where you feel comfortable would also appeal to women who might be your type.

But just as people get too focused on getting matches on dating apps, getting focused on where women are is missing a crucial factor: are you actually going to be able to go talk to them? After all, just as matching with someone on Tinder means very little, being in the physical proximity of attractive women means little if you don’t actually do something about it.

This is why even if you were to just suck it up and go to the places that annoy or frustrate you, you may well just be signing up for a second helping of frustration because you find yourself surrounded by incredible women… but can’t bring yourself to actually make the move to talk to them.

Now here’s a third thing to consider: the abundance of people at a club is not the same thing as an abundance of people you might date. One of the things that people tend to not realize is that very few relationships start off the first meeting. We very rarely date or start relationships with people we literally just met that day; more often than not, the attraction and connection has been built over time before the first date occurs. But a lot of people tend to see it as happening that quickly: go to the club, meet a person, get number, number turns into date.

But leaving how well that does or doesn’t work, it’s not an approach that’s likely to work well for you. And that’s quite alright, because one of the most important and under-appreciated factors of attraction is what’s known as “propinquity” – the tendency of people to form relationships with people they encounter frequently. One of the reasons why it’s easy to make friends in college, for example, is due to propinquity; you have dozens to hundreds of people that you see on a daily basis, making you feel more comfortable and connected to them.

The same applies to romantic relationships; the more you encounter the same person, the greater the odds that you form a friendship or even a romance with them. That is considerably less likely to happen at a frenetic nightclub, and doubly so for someone like you, who doesn’t like to visit them.

You’d do far better to find that quiet wine bar or a chill lounge and become a regular; you’re more likely to not only find like-minded folks with a similar temperament, but who are more likely to be regulars themselves… which helps enable the propinquity effect.

The same applies to cafes or other lower-energy venues during the day – the people you see more often are the folks you’re most likely to strike up a connection with.

In both cases, these aren’t likely to be venues where you can bounce from person to person to person like a sex-seeking pinball… but that’s not the same thing as “not being able to talk to them”. These are still social spaces, where it’s generally acceptable to talk to people, including women you find attractive. They’re just spaces where the social context is about conversation, not trying to get laid. If you’re willing to date slow and give things some time so that you can get to know folks and let them have a chance to get to know you, you’re much more likely to find not just new friends, but romance as well.

Now that being said: I would recommend not immediately refusing to go to places your friend likes. You may find the occasional bar or club that you do vibe with, or that you’re more flexible in your interests than you thought. Being willing to try new things instead of dismissing them out of hand helps make you a more well-rounded person and expands your horizons. You may even surprise yourself by having a good time.

But overall? Figure out who you’re most likely to be compatible with and work outward from there. You may have to make adjustments over time as you learn more about yourself, your interests and who you are compatible with vs. who you think you might be, but it will help you find the places that are more conducive to meeting the right people for you.

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I got wound up with what is and is not relevant, so essentially I have just put a narrative and then questions as the end. I honestly don’t know if it’s even possible to answer them all, so please do take what you like from it.

My girlfriend and I have been together coming up five years. I’m one of those people who always seems to be in a relationship. After things ended with my LAST girlfriend of five years I decided I really needed to time to be single, work on myself, and figure out my own wants and needs. Naturally I ran into my current girlfriend a month later and all that went out the window. Despite that lingering feeling that I’ve never really investigated that need to always be in a relationship, we had a really good four years – the best time in my life. However, things really started to slide about a year ago.

For context, sex had always been something of an issue in our relationship. I’m Scottish, my girlfriend Italian, and sometimes it feels like we have two very different cultural expectations. I’ve never lasted particularly long with penetrative sex (despite many, many kegels), but over the years in the spirit of everyone involved having s good time I’ve kept my foreplay and general intimacy skills in decent nick, so that has never been an issue with previous lovers. My girlfriend, on the other hand, typically regards anything less complete hammer and tongs f--king for a good hour as displaying a lack of enthusiasm. Added to which she is insistent that no Italian man she has been with ever lasts less than a half hour – and who am I to argue with her lived experience, but that just ain’t ever happening here. In the first flushes we brushed over this incompatibility, but as the years went by it got worse. She felt frustrated and unsatisfied, and I yoyoed between crippling anxiety knowing I was not pleasing her and insisting we try new techniques like a mad scientist throwing s--t at a wall, just making it feel more pressured.

Cut to last year. We had a great lockdown, really lucky, she moved in just before and we got to spend all our time together in that honeymoon period with great weather and limited work commitments. However, coming out of lockdown we had a big difference in feeling. I wanted to just continue as is, but my girlfriend felt she had become simply as extension of me, that we were too dependent on each other, and she needed to find out who she was again. She began a draw away, I could feel the distance and became more needy, and things really began to spiral.

Everything came to a head last November when she sat me down and asked for an open relationship. I say ask, but really she was asking are we doing the open thing or are we breaking up. She explained that while she loved me she was only 31, and she could not spend her life being sexually unsatisfied. While I possibly should have seen it coming (she was reading The Ethical Slut when we met) I was completely blindsided and took it pretty hard. But I looked around at my friends, all getting married and having kids, and I thought I might not want an open relationship but I don’t think I want that either, so f--k it, let’s jump on this train and see where it goes. After a brief period of reflection, in January it was off to the races.

Suffice to say it has gone….unexpectedly. I went completely to pieces for a few months, panic attacks, waking up crying. A lot of my friends kept telling me to leave my girlfriend, especially after one incident where she lied to me about going away with a friend when actually it was with a potential lover. For whatever reason I did not, and on some level despised myself for that, wondering if I was just too weak and scared to stand up for myself. However, over time things changed. As a result of me consistently voicing my needs over these months, my girlfriend modified her behaviour, becoming much more communicative and responsive, and started thinking of me a lot more. I also took myself down the gym, stopped scarfing down as many Reeces Pieces, and got some self-esteem back.

Now for the unexpected. I had assumed, given that my girlfriend has a rocking body and that whole Italian mystique thing going on while I am essentially Insert Pasty Scotsman Here, that she would be getting ridden 10-1 like the Grand National while I sat at home crying and wanking simultaneously. However, despite dating for a good six months and having at least of couple of ripped hunks eager to deflower her, she has not had sex with anyone, not even a kiss. She says she realised she can only have sex with someone if she is super comfortable with them, she’s never had casual sex in her life.

I, on the other hand, was a bit late to the party due to the aforementioned breakdown, but belatedly decided to get myself out there from May onwards, and with the aid of my new gym bod and a denim jacket am now drowning in pussy. This is also complicated by about a month ago meeting someone I feel I have a real connection with.

All of this has culminated in a situation where my girlfriend is now throwing shade at me a bit; both jealous of this new woman, and also frustrated and envious that she is not having extracurricular sex while I am.

Questions:

1. How do I think about my attractiveness to my girlfriend? Our sex life is now off the hook, orgasm city. In one way great, but I cannot escape the feeling that I’ve always been this guy and my girlfriend could not see it until other people found me attractive. That hurts, and I feel like we could have resolved our sex issues long ago if she’d been a more willing collaborator. I also am struggling to be sympathetic to her not having sex with others while I am. A massive part of me wants to say tough, you asked for this, but I know schadenfreude is not a good basis for a healthy relationship. I never thought I’d be sitting around of an evening wondering how to get my girlfriend laid, but here I am.

2. What do I owe to my girlfriend and this new woman? I really care for both but I don’t see how it’s not heading for disaster. Both want more of my time and attention, I want both in my life, and I feel like I’m hurting everyone. I’m also as mentioned up top aware that I fall head over heels very quickly, and I’m struggling to figure out if these feeling are genuine or just the rush of a new person. I do not want to jeopardise my existing relationship over a fling, but I also want to take advantage of the benefits of being open.

3. I think my girlfriend may want to close the relationship again. She recently asked how I would feel about her having another boyfriend but me only having hookups. I said no way, not because I necessarily want a second girlfriend but because I want equality of opportunity, but I left the door open to future discussion. I don’t know how to figure out how I feel about that. A part of me wants to remain open purely out of stubbornness, a feeling that we opened semi against my will, and I don’t want to be pushed into closing again. Ultimately, it’s brought a lot of pain, but also a lot of growth. How do I disentangle my ego from what I want?

Thanks,

Oh No, No, Please Do Dive Into My Open Relationship, The Water Is Delightful

DEAR THE WATER’S DELIGHTFUL: What’s interesting about all this is that your situation is both the inverse of people’s experiences, WID, but also an ironic mirror of them. As a general rule of thumb, when opposite sex couples open up their relationship, the female partner often has an easier time finding sexual partners. It’s frequently easier to find men who aren’t fussed about sleeping with a woman who already has a partner, whereas there are fewer women willing to do so with a partnered man. You can chalk this up to the tendency of men to lie about being in an open relationship, to how women face greater risks when it comes to sex – from pregnancy to STIs to social opprobrium, to physical and psychological violence – and the way many dudes treat their orgasm as a God-given right and their partner’s orgasm as supplemental at best.

However, it’s also a common trope that the person who asks for an open relationship under the assumption that they’re going to be eyeballs deep in sex discovers that their partner is having a much better time of it than they are. Socialization being what it is, this also tends to correspond to the male partner in hetero relationships asking to open things up under the assumption that he’s going to get all the tail he wants… so it’s amusing that the opposite seems to have happened here. Especially when your girlfriend was complaining about your performance in bed.

But that’s not what you asked about. We’ll start with the sex itself.

What you’ve discovered by opening up your relationship, WID, is what a lot of folks who were what’s sometimes called “poly-under-duress” have discovered: that the requirements of a functional polyamorous relationship meant that your primary or initial relationship not only rebounded but thrived.

As it turns out – and as you discovered – having to talk about your feelings, build trust and intimacy, ensure that your partner(s) feel understood and appreciated and actually, y’know, communicate tends to improve relationships.

There’s also a few other discoveries, such as the sexual excitement you may build elsewhere frequently rebounds with your partner, that feeling desired often increases one’s own feelings of desire and that seeing your partner being desired by someone else often has the effect of encouraging you to see them through someone else’s eyes… often changing or refreshing how you see them in your own relationship.

That having been said… I’m not entirely sure you are going to want to continue things with your girlfriend. I have a lot of concerns about your relationship, from both sides, and I think you need to put some serious thought into whether this is one you want to keep going.

I tend to think that one of the things that helps a relationship’s success and longevity (which are not the same thing) is a certain amount of flexibility and willingness to forgive, especially when entering new territory. There’s a tendency to take almost any relationship flaw or infraction and turn it into a Relationship Extinction Level Event with no second chances or even a pause to reflect. People are messy and imperfect and this extends into one’s relationships; people make mistakes, and there’s a difference between human fallibility and actual maliciousness. With no room for forgiveness, healing and discussing the issues, then every relationship becomes brittle as glass. But if folks reign in the initial knee-jerk response of “end it!”, those conflicts can – and frequently are – resolved in ways that leave the relationship stronger for it.

But that also requires that both people are invested in making choices for the right reasons. And right now… I have a lot of questions about you and your girlfriend. Let’s start with the fact that your girlfriend tends to ride roughshod over you and has to be reminded to treat you with more consideration. That’s not cool. It’s good that your speaking up and being more assertive has opened her eyes to how she was treating you, but I do notice that this tends to correlate with how much she’s getting her way.

It’s one thing, for example, to be actively dating when your primary or nesting partner may have some doubts or anxieties that can be addressed with reassurance and extra TLC. It’s another f--king thing entirely to keep going out on dates when your partner is having full-blown panic attacks and crying jags. That’s really not goddamn cool. That’s the point where a caring partner should look at how their behavior is affecting the person they theoretically care for and decide “Hey, maybe I should dial this back or voluntarily close the relationship for a bit until we get this resolved.” Her continuing to go out when you were having these attacks is pretty goddamn cold indeed, and I don’t disagree with your friends’ assertion that you should have left her over that. This is especially true when she lied about seeing a partner. Again: I believe in forgiveness and recognizing that sometimes mistakes can and will be made, especially when you’re doing something night-and-day different from your previous relationship dynamic. But her behavior seems very callous and uncaring towards someone she’d been with for years.

I would also note that this seems to go beyond the dynamic of one partner being more dominant or having a stronger personality than the other and straight to “does whatever she wants until someone finally pushes back.” Having a strong or assertive personality is one thing; ignoring or seeming to not care how their partner feels or how one’s behavior affects one’s partner is very goddamn different.

I also note that her desire to close things up again, or to at least change the conditions so that you have more restrictions, comes at a time when you’re discovering a new relationship with a person you seem to have a connection with. This doesn’t seem to be about fairness or equity but about control. I notice, for example, that she wasn’t as concerned about this when she was going on dates and you were at home feeling your heart break over and over again. Now that you’re having not just more success than either of you expected, but a genuine, budding connection with another person, now she is concerned about fairness and equity of outcome?

Under different circumstances, I’d be a bit more inclined to say “ok, that’s a fair thing to ask for”. But based on what you’ve written about your girlfriend and your relationship with her, I’m not entirely sure that this is being asked in good faith, and that she’s asking for things that I don’t know she has the right to ask.

This is where varying styles of polyamory come into play. In a hierarchical form of polyamory, one’s primary or nesting partner tends to come first. While in many, if not most poly circles, the idea of one partner having a veto is frowned upon, some folks in hierarchical relationships will give their primary partner priority over the others. And even in relationship anarchy models, it’s hard to act as though the longer-running (and often more life-entangled) relationship doesn’t often get more consideration if only based on the sheer weight of time and mutual investment.

But at the same time, when one partner starts dictating terms that affects not just their partner but the people their partner is in a relationship with? That’s when s--t gets ugly, fast.

By asking to close the relationship or for you to agree to only have casual hook-ups, she’s functionally demanding that you end the relationship you have with your new squeeze. The timing of her request and the specifics of it – additional romantic partners for me, but not for thee – makes my Spidey-sense tingle. Especially if she didn’t specify how long this would be for, or whether that would change when certain conditions were reached.

Under other circumstances, I could see this as being a somewhat reasonable request – if you’d made it earlier on while you were having your (understandable) freak-out, I would be fairly sympathetic. But her actions and seeming attitude up until now makes me feel less charitably inclined towards her.

And if I’m being honest, there’s a cynical part of me that wonders how much of that is about feeling threatened. It’s less that her relationship with you is under threat, but her position as The One Who’s In Control Because I’m The One With Options is.

But there’s also the fact that you clearly are still holding onto some resentment towards her, too. While yes, the irony of the situation is delicious, in a “oh look, it’s the consequences of my own actions” sort of way, it also seems like there’s still a significant amount of pain and bitterness that hasn’t been resolved. It’s great that things have improved, but have you two talked about how her behavior before now has made you feel? Have either of you made any effort to address it? Schadenfreude is one thing; feeling resentful that she was, as you put it, a less-willing collaborator and that she only seems to have cared more as soon as you had options are another entirely. And her throwing shade at you over it is not the sort of behavior I would expect to see from someone who’s able to handle the complexity of making multiple committed relationships work.

Under other circumstances, I would say it’s reasonable to at least discuss how to adjust your relationship so it’s more equitable for everyone. However the way it’s been rolled out feels less like trying to make things equitable and more about control and having something to hold over the other’s head. And that’s not good in either direction.

Quite frankly: while it’s not what you asked for advice on, I don’t think this relationship is doing either of you much good right now. I think you may be better taking what you’ve learned about yourself and finding a partner (or partners) who are more considerate of the person they’re dating… before they realize that you don’t have to sit there and accept it without question.

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’ve read “How To Have That Awkward Conversation”, but I have further stuff on the topic. I had a crush on a friend and it seemed at least somewhat mutual since he seemed to have more affection for me than the usual. Asked him out, he said no but at the time seemed to imply that it was more about him having issues than it was an issue with me. Still hung out with him. Then almost a year ago we were out in public together and some people we knew thought we were together romantically…and out of nowhere he basically threw a little fit at the idea, with pointing and gestures, reminded me of “Yuck, yuck, dog germs, dog germs!” etc. It was totally out of character for him and people have told me it sounds like some kind of autism temper tantrum (disclaimer: as far as I know he is not diagnosed with such but people tell me they think he’s autistic all the time) that came on from shock, that maybe he didn’t mean to blow a gasket like that, etc.

However, I have Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria and that broke the friendship for me. I was mortified that he acted that way in front of me, in front of others. The horror in his voice is burned into my brain and I think of it every time I think of him. That moment seemed to reveal the truth about how he feels about me: that I’m horrifying and repulsive to him. I’m not 100% ready to end it officially and it would make things socially awkward if we had an open feud among mutual friends and activities, so I have basically “quiet quit” the friendship and have been working to stop caring about him like that. I no longer initiate contact and only reply to him if he does, and I have avoided him most of the time for the last year. This has been easy to do since we are no longer doing any activities together and I only run into him at shows and parties, though it got super awkward regarding the holidays when I could no longer bear to give him a thoughtful handmade gift like usual and instead mailed him a gift card. (I know, I know. I had to reciprocate something and he’s not into bought stuff.) I find it hard to pretend that I’m Cool and Okay around him and sometimes I say very little to him or nothing at all during these run-ins. It’s awkward as hell for me, but I’m not even sure if he’s noticed any difference other than the gift thing, as he’s having a very good year and our lives no longer overlap like they used to, and he’s very introvert-y/in his head a lot. He’s probably never thought of it again since then and probably(?) has no idea he hurt my feelings. (I note that there was one time in the past when I felt like he was blowing me off, I eventually spoke up and he said he didn’t mean to, he’s just in his head and didn’t get that he came off like that and I should not take that personally..) He’s mostly acting same as usual around me when I do see him, like he hasn’t noticed. He’s probably fine and dandy without me, and meanwhile I feel like s--t about him. I hate it.

I still care about him, even if I’ve spent the last year trying not to. I feel like I’m being a s--tty friend and I treat him now in cold ways I don’t treat other people, and whether or not he’s noticed it, it bothers me that I’m acting like this. But I don’t know how to be friends with someone if he feels like this about me and that’s his truth, and it triggers all my own s--t about when guys had crushes on me and it wasn’t mutual and I didn’t like them *at all* and found *them* repulsive. Back then I wanted them to go away and to stop liking me like that, and ended up dropping them as friends entirely out of sheer uncomfortableness when they did not stop. It feels like karma finally got me for not liking them back, and I deserve this.

My therapist and various other people have told me I should really Say Something To Him about it, that presumably he was having a bad/shocked moment and maybe it’s not as bad as I think. But do I really want to make him feel bad and guilty and apologize when he presumably meant it, or discuss how much he doesn’t like me again? My stepfather (who thinks I should tell the guy to go blow forever, and he’s probably not wrong) said like you did, that I need to go into having this conversation knowing what I want. But I don’t know what that is. I just want things to go back to the way they were without my knowing that he finds the idea of being with me, or me in general, that traumatizing, but that’s not on the table. I don’t like being this level of a--hole, but also doesn’t he kind of deserve it? And if he really doesn’t like me, shouldn’t I avoid him? I’m torn between “I miss my friend” and “but he finds me repulsive and I should go away.” Maybe I just want him to know: this is why I’m no longer such a good friend to you and I can’t be there like I was before now that I know his truth. But I suspect this isn’t something that can really “get better” if I do say something, and maybe the nicest thing to do is to let the friendship wither without saying anything, especially if he doesn’t seem to have noticed that I’m gone or that anything is wrong. Why make him feel s--tty too on the way out? I haven’t the faintest how I’d even talk to him about this without feelingsbombing or feelingslettering either. I don’t know if I should say something or just let it slowly die, I don’t know how to talk to him about if I do, and I’m not at all sure what outcome I’m likely to get or what even I’d like to get under the circumstances.

I guess what I’m asking is the guy’s POV: if you really hurt a friend’s feelings (presuming that was not deliberate, which… maybe it was, subconsciously?), would you want to know that you hurt them, or is it better to let things politely die? I’m not even sure I’d want someone to bring it up to me, to be honest. What’s the best way to handle this situation?

–Karma Gave Me What I Deserved

DEAR KARMA GAVE ME WHAT I DESERVED: This is one of those times when the question you’re asking isn’t the question you want answered, KGMWID.

I think you’re asking two questions here.

1. Are you right for feeling the way you feel about this?

2. Are you doing what’s right or are you trying to hurt someone who hurt you?

There’re a few things here that leap out at me that need to be considered. First there’s this:

“I have Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria”

and then there’s this:

“I don’t like being this level of a--hole, but also doesn’t he kind of deserve it?”

Let’s start with the RSD. For those who don’t know or haven’t experienced it, Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria is the sort of thing that sounds like it may as well be called “over-reacting syndrome” or “lives-for-the-drama-itis”. For those who actually have it, it’s much closer to having very specific anxiety that is omnipresent and always active, like the world’s worst Spidey-sense. Except instead of warning you of danger, it’s more akin to telling you that the people who you care for and you think care for you are going to drop you like a bad habit any minute now. It takes the fear and pain of social rejection from everyone, dials it all up to 11 and then snaps the knob off. It tends to be co-morbid with conditions like ADHD, borderline personality disorder and others.

Here’s the important part though: RSD isn’t just “oh I am so sensitive, rejection hurts me more”, it’s your brain being on constant alert to the possibility that someone’s going to kick you out of their life, regardless of the facts. It’s like a particularly nasty version of confirmation bias. And like confirmation bias, it means you’re going to see evidence of this everywhere… even when it’s not actually there. And when you run into scenarios where someone does literally anything that could be interpreted as rejection, your brain will go out of its way to round even the mildest comment up to “I regret every moment of my life that I’ve spent with you”. Even if they said nothing of the sort.

Now I say this as someone who’s ADHD combo-platter came with a bonus side of RSD when I tell you this: RSD will just make s--t up. The hyper-vigilance of RSD means that, absent anything else, it will quite cheerfully take anything and turn it into evidence that people hate you, no matter how banal or nonsensical it is.

So I think the odds are very good that your therapist is right: this is your brain taking an admittedly ill-thought-out comment and turning it Into A Thing.

Now this isn’t to say that how you feel isn’t real. You absolutely feel hurt, ashamed, betrayed even. Those are all real and valid. You are feeling them and you’re feeling those things for a reason. But I strongly suspect that you’re feeling them based on inaccurate information. I suspect that what happened with your friend is that someone made the usual cliché comment about two opposite sex friends clearly have to be into each other and he responded with the equally cliché “what? NOoooooooo” – an (occasionally playfully intended) response about a lack of romantic interest. But your RSD turned that into “Oh sweet Jesus I would never want anything to do with this person ever how could you ever even think that NOW I NEED A THOUSAND SHOWERS TO EVER FEEL CLEAN AGAIN” and that is what your RSD is reacting to.

And it hurt! It really really hurt! Even if that’s not what he intended, that’s how it hit and it legitimately hurt you. Which is why I think everything afterwards is you responding to that hurt. But I think there’s also a part of you that recognizes that. I strongly suspect that part of you knows this for what it is, but that part is in conflict with the part that reacted in that moment, which sees this as The Great Betrayal and has been behaving accordingly. But therein is the problem: you kinda committed in the moment to The Great Betrayal.

This is where the conflict between “trying to make yourself not care” and “wanting your friend back” comes in. The part of you that suspects that this was your RSD f--king with you came in after the anger and hurt and lashing out. But human nature is a motherf--ker and when you’ve sunk a lot of time and energy into feeling or thinking a certain way… well, I think you ended up in a place where you don’t know if you can walk it back or not. It’s a form of the sunk cost fallacy, a sort of ego-protection against admitting that you’ve made a mistake and trying to walk it back will be embarrassing at best. Even if nobody else would think it’s embarrassing.

The “…but doesn’t he deserve it?” part of your question is the RSD and the pain lashing out like a wounded animal because you were hurt. It’s not justice, it’s not even karma, it’s just pure “he hurt me and now he must suffer for it.” But it’s also sort of you hurting yourself for “allowing” yourself to be hurt, on top of projecting how you felt about those guys crushing on you onto him for no real reason. Hence the “karma got me” feeling.

But that’s not all. This isn’t about what’s “deserved”, either by him or by you. It’s also you trying to figure out what’s real or not. Part of what’s bothering you is that you’re trying to gauge how much he actually does or doesn’t like you by seeing how he reacts to your having dialed things back. The fact that he doesn’t seem to be living in misery is making things worse. Does this mean he never cared about you and your exiting his life created no ripples at all? Does he think so little of you that he didn’t even notice you had pulled away? Doesn’t that mean that you’re right?

Or is this just a case where someone said something without thinking and now your RSD is using that to just make everything worse?

If I’m being honest, I suspect that the reason why things haven’t changed dramatically is because… well, you did the whole “quiet quitting” thing, which is to say, you didn’t really change your behavior much at all except now you don’t reach out first and gave him a gift card instead of a homemade gift which almost certainly got read as “well, probably didn’t have time this year”. Or he could be like me and be just fine with gift cards.

But here’s the thing. You’re having to fight to try to not care, which tells me that there’s a part of you that recognizes this for what it is. You’re feeling awful about it because, I suspect, you reacted to something due to your own baggage, rather than what he actually said or did. Trust me, I get it; been there, done that, had multiple long, dark, sleepless nights of the soul over it. But if you stop, do your best to strip the emotion out of it and look as objectively at his behavior as you possibly can… does any of it seem like the sort of behavior of someone who truly doesn’t like you? If you were to take yourself out of the equation, if this were two people you knew having this issue and the offender was acting just as your friend has been the entire time, would you say that he clearly hates his friend? Or would you say that the other friend misunderstood things and is reacting to that misunderstanding?

And, importantly: would you advise them to end that friendship – one that’s clearly still very important to them – over that misunderstanding?

Probably not. Which is why I think you should take a similar position for yourself.

I think you should have an Awkward Conversation with your friend about this. And I think what you should want out of it is very simple: you want to clear the air and know where you stand with him. So I think you should make time to talk it out with him and frame it this way: “Hey, when X asked about us, the way you responded sounded like ‘ew ew gross, dog germs, I don’t like her I hate her!’ to me and it really hurt me. I want to know if that’s how you actually feel, because I need to know if I need to exit this friendship. But if not, I need you to understand that I’m really prone to taking things like that very personally and very seriously and it hurts me a LOT, even if you don’t mean it.”

Leave the ‘did you even notice I pulled away’ part out unless he brings it up. Just focus on how that specific incident affected you and why. The point here is confirmation and affirmation: either you are right and he hates you or you misunderstood and you’re risking giving up a friendship that means a lot to you for no real reason.

Now, if he does dislike you… well, it’s going to hurt. A lot. But it’s a short, sharp pain, rather than the prolonged agony of dragging it all out. Like ripping a bandage off, it’ll hurt like crazy, but the pain will fade much faster than if you sloooooooowly peel it back, one centimeter at a time. The clean break heals fastest after all. And that is a pain that will cauterize the wound and you’ll be able to leave this friendship behind with the knowledge that you were right and justified to do so.

But if I’m right, what this will do is help him realize that he was careless around you, while you will realize that you’ve been putting yourself (and him) through hell for no reason. This will be the chance for you to put down the hurt you’ve been carrying around and rebuild your friendship with him. And, just as importantly, you’ll have new understanding of one another… and hopefully he’ll know not to be so careless with how he says things around you next time.

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com